


The Skin I'm In Feels Ordinary

by BCRebel



Series: What If We All Die Young? [2]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate, Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Animorphs AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-03
Updated: 2014-04-27
Packaged: 2018-01-18 00:16:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1407898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BCRebel/pseuds/BCRebel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We can't tell you who we are. Or where we live. It's too risky, and we've got to be careful. Really careful. So we don't trust anyone. Because if they find us...  well, we just won't let them find us.</p><p>The thing you should know is that everyone is in really big trouble. Yeah. Even you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First attempt at a longer story in a long time. Not sure how long it'll end up being but I've got the plot mapped out. This story is based on the plot of Animorphs #13 - The Change. Major plot points are the same (within certain boundaries, considering the changed cast), but I hope the specifics are different enough to be interesting for those who are familiar with Animorphs already.
> 
> (Title taken from 'Skin Graph' by Silversun Pickups)

My name is Sarah, and I'm a freak. 

My last name doesn't matter anymore, and if it did I wouldn't tell you anyway. The things I have to tell you are important, like fate-of-the-world important, even if there's no way you're going to believe me. I just really can't give you any specifics.

It's nothing personal. It's just that you might be one of them, and we have to be careful. Now you're probably wondering who 'they' are. Well, they're the Yeerks, and they're everywhere and they could be anyone – your best friend, your parents, the mail man, your chemistry teacher, _anyone._

The Yeerks are parasites. They live in people's heads; crawl in through the ear, squeeze themselves flat, wrap themselves around your brain, and then they control you. That's what we call the people they've taken: Controllers.

Who's we? As far as I know we're the only ones who even know they're here. We do what we can to fight back, because the Yeerks want to take over all of humanity – they've done it before on other planets, to other species. Ever heard of a Hork-Bajir? Taxxon? Didn't think so. They're aliens, whole species, each from their own entirely different world, and there isn't a single one of either of 'em that doesn't have a Yeerk slug crawling around in their head.

Hork-Bajir are the Yeerk's shock troops. They're big, they're mean, they're giant lizards and they've got more blades sticking out of them than the Swiss Army would know what to do with. Alison calls them Cuisinarts with legs, and I don't call 'em much of anything when I can avoid it. Thing is, the Hork-Bajir weren't always monsters. They used to live in trees, used those knives on their arms to cut bark. It's the Yeerks that turned them into weapons.

As bad as the Hork-Bajir can be, the Taxxons are worse. Not in a fight - compared to Hork-Bajir, the Taxxons are pushovers. They're like giant yellow centipedes with a million little claws and a big mouth full of nasty teeth on the top of their heads. They can't see very well, but they're fast, and their claws are big enough to hold the guns the Yeerks use, plus there's a hell of a lot of them, but what makes the Taxxons worse than Hork-Bajir is that they chose this. They gave themselves to the Yeerks willingly, because all they care about is feeding their insatiable hunger.

Trust me, that hunger is bad. I haven't felt it myself, but I've got friends who have _ been _ Taxxons and that's one nightmare I'm glad I got to avoid.

What do I mean by that? Well, my friends and I aren't much. There's only five of us, there used to be six, but we've got something the Yeerks don't. We have the power to morph. Some of us, anyway. About a year ago, my friends and I met a dying Andalite – they're the good guys, sort of, fighting the good fight against the Yeerks – and he told us about all of this. Then he gave us the Andalites' secret weapon.

The morphing power lets us absorb the DNA of any animal we can touch, then we can turn into that animal any time we want. Most of us can anyway. Not me.

When I said I was a freak, earlier? I wasn't talking about the powers my friends have. See, I got the morphing power too, but then I broke the first rule of Morph Club: never stay in a morph for longer than two hours. If you do, you don't get to go back.

When I say I'm a freak, I mean it. I'm not a person anymore. I'm a Peregrine Falcon. I'm a black and white bird, less than two feet long, complete with a sharp beak and some talons. Not exactly your typical freedom fighter, but I do what I can.

I live in the woods behind my friend Cosima's family farm. There's plenty of space to fly, smaller birds and the occasional rodent to eat, trees to sleep in. It's not much, but it's home.

I know what you're thinking (well, okay, no I don't, there's a  _ lot _ of things you could be thinking about what I just told you, but I'm only about to cover one of them), what do I do all day? I have a lot more free time than I know what to do with, more free time than a normal human would know what do with anyway. That's where instincts come in handy

You see, when you go into a morph, you get more than just the body of an animal with the mind of a human. My mind is still in here – my human mind – but there's a falcon in here too. Everything I needed to know to get by as a falcon came with the body. What do I do with my down time? When there isn't some kind of life and death mission to deal with I hunt, clean my feathers, hunt, keep an eye on my territory, hunt, you know – bird stuff. Us birds-of-prey spend a lot of time hunting, and I can pretty much turn my human brain off (or at least turn the volume down) when I need to, keep it from getting bored.

Oh, and I fly. While being stuck as a falcon hasn't been the best time, all around, I'll admit that flying is pretty great, and it really never gets old.

The rest of my time I spend with Helena.

Helena is my sister. Twin, actually. Sometimes I think she's the only reason I can still remember what my face used to look like. We didn't always know each other though. Helena and I are orphans, don't know a bloody thing about who our parents are or where we came from, grew up in the foster system – or at least, I did.

The wonderful foster system of America (or Canada, maybe the UK – sorry, you know I can't tell you where we live) failed Helena pretty badly. I had a bit of a rough childhood, but Helena slipped right through the cracks, ran away from an abusive foster dad when she was maybe eight or nine, and grew up living on the streets. We're seventeen now. That's a long time to be out there on your own. I still don't know how she made it through as well as she did.

Now, Helena lives in an unused building on Cosima's farm. Cosima's parents have converted the farm into what they call the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic, but there are a few buildings they only use for storage, and by some miracle Cos has managed to keep them oblivious to the homeless girl living in one of them. She shares the space with Rachel, but they don't really get along most of the time and Helena tends to spend most of her time out in the woods, usually nose deep in a book.

As for Rachel? Well, Rachel is an Andalite – long story – and I really don't know what Rachel does with her down time. I guess she spends her time eating grass with her feet, meditating, making fun of all the primitive humans behind their backs... you know, alien stuff. To be honest I haven't asked. I wasn't kidding about the grass part though (she doesn't even have a mouth).

  


The story I have to tell you, started in the woods just like any other day. I was resting in one of my favorite trees - yes, I have favorite trees. I'm a bird. Sue me – and getting ready take another flight around my territory, maybe find something to eat. That is, until Helena came looking for me.

Now, when Helena wants to find me she has two options. She can pick a morph, turn into an animal, and start projecting thought-speak around until I answer her – thought-speak is an Andalite thing that comes with the morphing, and it's exactly what it sounds like – or she can make a lot of noise and hope I'm around to notice. This time, she picked the second.

“Sister? Sarah!” I heard her shouting only about hundred feet from my tree, I don't think she'd been looking for me for very long either.

“Can you hear me? If you can, then let me know. I will wait fifteen minutes before searching somewhere else,” Helena yelled one more time.

I could see her from my spot in the tree. She had just taken a seat on a fallen log and was patiently kicking her legs back and worth waiting for me, and she had another book with her but wasn't trying to read it.

Now, I know walking around in the woods yelling 'Sarah' doesn't seem like a terribly efficient way to get in touch. Thought-speak has a pretty huge range, much better than shouting even if Peregrines have pretty great hearing. Thing is, morphing takes a lot of energy. Unless there's something you plan on doing once you're morphed it's a lot easier just to yell and wait. Plus Helena knows I like this part of the woods. It's why she checked here first.

I took off from my perch, caught a nice updraft and made a big arc around the clearing she'd picked to wait in, before making a slow dive to perch on a tree right behind her.

I think she could have heard me from her log, but she was expecting thought-speak and didn't look up. I decided I felt like making an entrance and dove out of the tree straight toward my sister, stretching out and flapping my wings the last few feet to kill my speed and getting a nice grip on the shoulder of her heavy coat with my talons.

Helena nearly toppled off of her log and let out a bit of yelp before catching her balance. She didn't bother saying anything, but gave me a look that was equal parts amused and annoyed.

<Finish this one already, then?> I asked, inquiring about the book she obviously wasn't reading.

As I mentioned before, Helena loves to read. A year ago, before she meet us, she could barely read street signs – couldn't even spell her own name. It really pisses me off thinking about how much she missed thanks to that asshole she ran away from, but in the year that I've known her Helena has been one of the fastest learners I've ever seen.

With help from Cosima and I (yes, Helena was taught to read by a bird), Helena is now an excellent reader. She doesn't actually go to school (can't, really, since with school comes the foster system, and they'd just send her off to another city somewhere), but she'll read anything she can get her hands on, and Cosima's parents have quite the collection.

Helena looked down at the book in her hands then back up to where I was perched on her shoulder.

“Yes, I finished on the walk out here. Cosima is away or I might have tried to get another one from her. What have you been up to?” she asked.

Sometimes I think Helena tries harder than she needs to to pretend we're a more normal family. I rarely have an interesting answer to 'how was your day' kind of questions, but she likes to ask.

<Oh, you know, Bird Stuff.>

Helena let out something that was either a laugh or an exasperated huff, then stood up and began making her way deeper into the woods.

“Well, since you don't seem to be busy doing Bird Stuff anymore, and I have finished my book, why don't we go flying?”

She began to shrug off her coat, dislodging me in the process, and as I made my way up to a nearby branch in a bout of undignified flapping, Helena stripped down to her morphing outfit.

When a person morphs, they can't normally morph anything else with them. If you're wearing clothes, they'll generally get left behind, which can make for a bit of a mess when they're suddenly wrapped around whatever it is you've decided to turn into. Thankfully, that isn't always the case. Skin tight material will normally morph with you. Swimsuits, leotards, bike shorts, sports bras and such generally work just fine and we call something like that a morphing outfit.

Once Helena had all of her loose clothing removed and had reached the big tree we use as a landmark, she folded everything into a pile at its base, stuck it in a trash bag we keep out here, and then started to morph.

Morphing is a weird process. It  _ looks _ like it should be really painful. Your skin changes, your bones shrink or grow and rearrange. Sometimes you grow extra limbs, or the ones you have fuse into your body and disappear. It's a bit gruesome to watch, most of the time.

Thankfully it doesn't actually hurt. It's been a while since I've done it, but while it feels a bit weird, it's really not all that bad. In Helena's case, it isn't even all that horrible to look at.

Helena is what Rachel calls an  _ Estreen _ , which is an Andalite word meaning 'really good at morphing', more or less. Helena has a natural talent for controlling the morphing process. She can make the change happen in whatever order she wants, and whenever she does it she makes it look like something completely natural.

At that moment, Helena's skin had begun to grow feathers and her arms had stretched out into wings. When the others morph birds they can look like an awkward mess of different sized appendages, and the feathers tend to come last after they've already turned into ugly naked half-bird things, unless they're really lucky. Helena's 'half-bird thing', on the other hand, looked more like some kind of angel or mythological creature.

Sometimes I get down about what morphing did to my life, but I don't think I'll ever get tired of watching Helena do it.

After about a minute, a second Peregrine Falcon stood on the forest floor next to Helena's bag of clothes. Helena, now fully morphed, gave her wings a few quick flaps, then took off from the ground and landed next to me on my branch.

Neither of us needed to say anything. We sat perched on the branch for another moment or two then took off at the same time as the wind picked up a bit and a nice thermal air current caught us and pulled us up with it.

Helena and I don't always need to talk when we're with each other, especially when she's morphed. We fall into synch with each other easily and our communication happens almost automatically. It's a hard thing to put into words. As Helena would say, we have a connection.

Helena is the only family I've ever had, but I think our bond goes deeper than that. I lost a huge part of my old life barely a week after we met, but she's been here through all of this to help keep me sane.

I told you I can turn off the human parts of my brain when I need to, and to a degree that's true. I won't lie and say I haven't thought about running away, giving up on trying to fight a war that's much bigger than I should ever have to face, and living the rest of my life as a falcon. I could do it, probably, but the thing is when I turn off my human instincts, it's temporary. I'm choosing to ignore them, they don't just disappear. I could keep ignoring them indefinitely, but I don't want that kind of lonely, hollow existence.

Besides, who else is going to fight in my place?

Helena is my link to the things I'm fighting for.

I'm not sure what I represent to her, but I do know I've helped undo a little bit of the years worth of damage her life has done to her. I like to think she needs me as much as I need her, and I'm glad we found each other.

  


Have I mentioned that there's nothing quite like flying?

Helena and I go flying together a lot, and as much fun as it is – and it is a lot – it's normally pretty routine. You catch a good rising air current that'll pull you straight up like an elevator, then once you're up there you let gravity do the rest. The area we live in is nice for sightseeing from a bird's eye perspective, but after a year we've both pretty much seen it all.

That day, I decided to give the wilderness a bit of a break and take our flight plan a bit closer to town. I prefer the forest. My falcon brain feels at home there, and more often than not these days so does the rest of me, but it can be nice to fly into town for a change in scenery, and there's nothing like a big asphalt parking lot on a hot day for catching thermals.

Of course, sometimes things don't go according to plan. My territory is maybe a 5-10 minute flight outside of town on a good day, but I realized after we had been flying for about 15 minutes that the town was nowhere in sight.

In fact, I could see a few landmarks I recognized, and knew that somehow we were about a 10 minute flight in the opposite direction, headed toward the mountains. I looked around and saw Helena following behind me. She didn't seem to have noticed anything odd, but I was having trouble believing I'd spaced out so badly.

<Helena, have we been heading toward the mountains this whole time?> I decided to ask. It was a strange question, but my sister tends to take strange questions in stride.

She did sound a bit concerned when she answered, <I believe so. I've been following you, but we've been keeping a pretty straight course. Is everything alright?>

<I think so. I just think it might be a good day to fly into town. I haven't been out of the woods in days and I think you've spent that whole time cooped up on the farm.> and with that, I made a quick turn to point myself back toward civilization.

That's when things got weird. It was another five minutes before I looked down and noticed an out cropping of rocks I was sure we'd passed over at least once already, and after we'd turned around. Helena soon noticed something was off as well.

<Sister, something odd is going on. We have flown past the same group of trees three times now and I can still not see the town.>

I took a second to look around, slowing down a bit to observe the area we seemed to be unable to leave. That's when I saw it.

<Helena, does that tree look strange to you?> I asked as I banked back toward the tree in question.

It was a fairly ordinary looking tree, if you ignored the roots it didn't seem to have, and the fact that it was sliding across the ground as if it were mounted on wheels we couldn't see.

<Sarah, I do not think that is a tree.>

As Helena finished her thought, the not-tree stopped it's sliding, revealing a hole in the hill beneath it. As soon as the hole was fully uncovered, I saw a large snake-like head stick itself out and take a look around. I could recognize those horns anywhere.

<Hork-Bajir! This must be a remote entrance to the Yeerk Pool,> I said.

The Yeerk Pool is the underground base the Yeerk's have running underneath the whole town. The slugs themselves need to spend a few hours in the pool every three days to absorb nutrients or else they'll starve.

It was a surprise seeing an entrance this far out of town, but Hork-Bajir meant Yeerks, and that was the only explanation I could come up with for secret Yeerk tunnels in the middle of nowhere.

<Hork-Bajir? Out in the middle of the day? I do not understand. Even with no humans around this is a risk they would not normally take.>

Helena was right. The eight foot tall, razor-bladed, lizard monsters that were the Yeerks favorite slaves were also obviously alien. They tended to keep them underground and out of sight as much as possible. Maintaining humanity's ignorance of the ongoing invasion was one of the Yeerks' most important objectives.

Something was off about this Hork-Bajir though, it almost looked nervous – as much as a massive reptilian alien can anyway – as it climbed the rest of the way out of the hidden tunnel and turned back to help a second Hork-Bajir climb up.

That's when the alarms started. The two Hork-Bajir burst into an all out sprint into the nearby forest. As Helena and I moved to follow them a group of humans began climbing out of the hole, armed to teeth with at least one gun per person.

<Helena, I think those two Hork-Bajir are trying to escape.>

It didn't make sense, but that was the only reason I could think of that the Hork-Bajir we'd just seen would be running from the human Controllers now emerging from the tunnel.

Just then a group of rocks nearby began to move on its own, and soon a second tunnel was revealed, this time large enough for a group of ATVs to come rolling out, manned by more Controllers.

<We need to catch up to those Hork-Bajir. I know these woods, there's a hard to spot cave about a mile north of us. I think we should try to help them get there before the Controllers catch up.> I told Helena, and then put myself into a hard dive to pick up speed. Helena followed my example without hesitation.

The fleeing Hork-Bajir were already quite a ways ahead of us, but if you don't know much about Peregrine Falcons, I'm about to fill you in - we can be really damn fast when we need to be.

I'd gained enough speed by the time I pulled out of my dive that it wasn't long before I had eyes on the Hork-Bajir we were following. They were making extremely good time considering the terrain, carving a path for themselves as they went, but it was only a matter of time before the Controllers on their tails caught up.

I opened up my mind and sent a burst of thought-speak to the first Hork-Bajir we caught up with.

<Hey, there are a lot of human Controllers behind you with guns and vehicles and they're gaining fast. I can help you lose them but you're going to have to trust me.>

To it's credit, the running Hork-Bajir didn't even stumble at the sudden voice in its head. It did look up briefly to look around but quickly focused back on it's path.

<Take a hard right behind the boulder coming up ahead of you, and then keep north. When you come to water, follow it up stream.> I told it, then in private thought-speak targeted specifically at Helena I asked her to fly ahead and track down the second Hork-Bajir.

Thankfully, the first Hork-Bajir was good at taking directions, and thanks to Helena it's partner had soon doubled back and was on the same trail. Unfortunately that's when I heard the sounds of engines coming up behind us.

I aimed my thought-speak at both Hork-Bajir at once, <There's a group of ATVs coming up behind you, but the stream next to us should be too deep for them to cross quickly. If you can swim, I need you to cut across as soon as you can and make for the trees on the other side. Try not to cut so much of a trail when you get there, that's probably how they followed us this far.>

Luckily, Hork-Bajir can swim. They both dove into the nearby stream – at this point more like a small river – and were across and into the treeline by the time the first ATV was in sight.

With the water between us and the pursuing Controllers I hoped we'd bought the runaway Hork-Bajir enough time to make it safely to the cave I'd had in mind. I caught an upward moving air current and gained a bit of altitude before looking around to spot Helena.

<Helena, can you head back to the farm and see if Cosima is back? I think we need to gather up the team and talk about what to do with these two runaways before we get too much farther. I'll get these two to the cave I was talking about and then meet you back at the clinic.>

Helena didn't bother giving me an answer, just flapped her wings hard a few times for altitude and made a course for home.

After guiding the Hork-Bajir the rest of the way to the cave I'd had in mind, I settled on a nearby branch and took a second to reassure the escapees.

<You two should be safe here for now. I'll sweep the area outside before I leave, make sure they aren't likely to stumble across you on accident. I'll be back soon, with help.>

Before I could take off one of the Hork-Bajir stepped toward me and gave me an intense stare.

“Thank you, flying creature. I do not know what you are, or why you help, but my Kalashi and I owe you our lives.”

I wasn't sure how to respond to such a solemn oath of gratitude so I just nodded briefly before taking off and heading for the farm.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so this isn't actually an update. My laptop's hard drive died two days ago and as of right now I'm having to write this through the browser on my ps4. I had about 4000 words of ch2 on my laptop, about 3000 of which got sent to a friend to read over at one point. If she still has the partial chapter it shouldn't take too much to finish, but either way it's going to be at least 2-3 weeks before I can replace my computer. I just wanted to give a status update and apologize to anyone waiting on my next chapter. 
> 
> (and for some reason my note from ch1 shows up below this, please ignore it)

..........

**Author's Note:**

> I should have the next chapter up before next week. Let me know what you think. If people enjoy this I might think about adapting other Animorphs stories to these characters (I'd kind of love to try tackling Alison's PoV in this AU), or maybe something entirely unique, who knows.


End file.
